Years ago, I owned a piece of original Dave Sim art from Cerebus. It was a page from Cerebus #11. I bought it at a New York convention from Dave’s then-wife Deni who was selling pages at their table. It’s the page just before the very first full page appearance of Cockroach.

It was the multi-panel page where Cockroach is off-panel, ranting like a nutcase and Cerebus is going through a number of twisted facial expressions.

If I was a true collector, I would’ve bought the page with the actual first appearance of Cockroach. But I really liked all the different animated expressions on Cerebus’ face. It was a tour-de-force of character drawing.

I bought it for $15.

I framed it when I got back home and it hung on my wall through various moves over the years. When space got tight, thought, I sold it off.

Micah Ian Wright (you might remember him from his comic book work on Stormwatch: Team Achilles, or on the TV series The Angry Beavers and Constant Payne) is returning to comics.

The project is a big one, a 215-page graphic novel called Duster, and the fund-raising began this week at Kickstarter, my favorite site to find new and interesting comics. Micah’s posted the first 39 (!) pages for viewing at the site (in full color as a free download). You can’t go wrong with 39 pages of free comics.

Joining Micah on the book is his co-writer Jay Lender (who’s written for Phineas and Ferb and Spongebob Squarepants).

The book is being illustrated by a pair of excellent Argentine artists, Cristian Mallea (Gayolas, El Eternauta) and JOK (known for his work on Mixtape and Redball 6).

Says Micah, “Duster takes place at the close of the European conflict in World War II, and tells the story of a war-widowed female cropduster pilot who must defend her daughter and her neighbors against a planeload of escaping Nazis who have crashed in her West Texas town. The action-packed story examines women's changing roles in society during the war years and after.”

Yeah, yeah, Avengers-mania is dying down and we’re back to counting the days until San Diego, right? Well, I am. In the meantime, let's read:

Want some story-writing advice from the gang at Pixar? Of course you do.

There’s no doubt that without writer Bill Finger, Batman wouldn’t be Batman. Booksteve’s Library has read and enjoyed Bill, The Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman by Marc Tyler Nobleman. “Bob Kane was rather a self-serving individual who rarely did anything himself when he could get someone else to do it for him.” One of those someones was the writer Bill Finger.

I love any kind of mash-up where genres that don’t normally go together are creatively intermingled: vampire detectives, robot boxers, super dinosaurs...

Writer Carl Elvis and artist Claudio Munoz have created Dead West, a combining of cowboys and monsters that looks right in my wagon wheelhouse. When a gold rush town starts attracting supernatural elements, Victor Frankenstein creates a “Frankenstein sheriff” to keep the peace along with his pals, a six-gun mummy and a Billy The Kid-style vampire.

The art looks great and the concept sounds like a lot of fun. They’re short on their Kickstarter funding, so if this seems as appealing to you as it does to me, give ‘em a hand, pardner.

Actor-stuntman Ernie Reyes, Jr. has appeared in movies from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Now he’s looking to crossover into comic books and he’s assembled quite a team to help him out.

Sonny Dragon and The Wuxia Knights is an all-ages comic. According to Ernie’s pitch: Detective Sonny Dragon joins “an elite team of martial arts superheroes known as the Wuxia Knights, after he traces the death of his master to a mystical martial arts kingdom hidden in the streets of San Francisco known as the Wuxiaverse.”

Ernie’s co-written the script with Samuel R. Barrera. Art is by TMNT veteran Jim Lawson, whose stuff is just fantastic. Just look at the sample art on the site. Coloring is by the Eisner-winning Steve Oliff with lettering by Harvey-winning Tom Orzechowski.

In the world of instant digital books, this was bound to happen sooner or later.

Paul Moore went to the Phoenix Comic Con over the Memorial Day weekend, and took a bunch of photos. Then he created a three-volume series of Kindle e-books reproducing those photos. I got the first one from Amazon for free during a promotion (it may still be going on).

People Watching Comic Con Phoenix 2012 - Volume 1 is approximately 75 pages, and 70 of them are photographs from the con. According to Moore’s description, “There is nothing quite as fun as people watching that is not either fattening, illegal, or immoral.”

Let's take a quick look at some of my favorite Kickstarter projects and see how they're doing.

The Devil Is Due In Dreary is really close to getting fully funded. There's not much time left, so go over there and check it out.

"Two strangers with a questionable past arrive in the reclusive town of Dreary and unknowingly fulfill a prophecy the town believes will precede the coming of the apocalypse." This looks like a very fun and original project, deserving of support.

I love funny stuff and after reading about Lea Hernandez’s new Kickstarter program for her graphic novel, The Garlicks, I knew I wanted it.

According to Lea’s PR material, The Garlicks is “a webcomic/graphic novel about a vampire girl, for girls.” But guys apparently dig it too and it’s a lot of fun. You can check out some archived strips at the Garlicks website.

Lea’s going to serialize three color pages each week on her site and the Kickstarter fund is to finance those strips and the publication of the first story into a nice 148-page trade, with an introduction by Scary Godmother’s Jill Thompson.

But what is The Garlicks? Says Lea, “It’s a vampire tale, told from the POV of Pandora, a vampire with zero vampire abilities and the big sister of baby Pamila (who's usually called Ham), who seems to have gotten everything Pandora didn't, like being able to shapeshift into an adorable flying fish and eat meat.”